


Ash

by Trahearne



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Nightmare Court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9308285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trahearne/pseuds/Trahearne
Summary: The day Letharus, Knight of Ashes, was finally free of his first court and a moment of pride as he sees the handiwork of his squire, Sellona.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic, roughly three years old, revived and edited for Sellona's player.

Letharus’ hands trembled as he turned over the soft leaf in his hand. It was not what he was looking for and he knew that from ten feet off. He was late, late enough that the duchess was sure to flay him alive. No, she wouldn’t do anything herself, she’d hand him off to that snake of a man. She was wound so tightly around his finger she might as well been below him. It had been him, the count, that ordered that Letharus restock his store of medical herbs just an hour before a court meeting. What was he to do? Either way he was to be punished.

It had to be today, when he was supposed to be knighted, after years and years of being the only mender worth his salt in this backwater, worthless pit of scavengers. That horrible weasel couldn’t resist the chance to take what little power he might gain. This way he’d have even more reason to torment, humiliate, use him; and he’d made it so he couldn’t even run.

Letharus waited for the shaking that had overcome him to calm before getting to his feet, leaning heavily on his staff. His scarred bark creaked and ached at his every movement, an ever present reminder of his helplessness. His flesh golem lumbered around nearby, picking at dead logs for him. The necromancer sighed and called it closer. It stomped over, it’s jagged horned head low and claws held out. He set his basket on one claw and rested his hand on the other for support.

Down the slope, thick with undergrowth, was his “home” hidden by broad, twisted trees.  And above them... smoke? He frowned, his predicament forgotten for a moment as he watched the thick, black smoke spiral up to the dusky sky. A bonfire? Instinct told him something was very wrong.

* * *

 

The damage was incredible. Court Blackbriar, or what had been Blackbriar, was small and situated in a ravine made of jagged rock on three sides and an ancient, hollow tree trunk on the other.  There was two entrances, each well guarded by twisting briars and vicious spiders. Easy to defend but difficult to escape.

Letharus choked on a breath of hot air and ash as he made his way down the narrow gap in the rock. Fire had chewed through everything in its path. The hounds and spiders lay curled and broken in their kennels, buildings were nothing but crumbling supports and flakes of black leaves, and then there were corpses. Whatever had caused this fire had been fast and directed, a deliberate attack. There was not a courtier alive for what he could see. The one spark of life he could feel was weak and beyond his help to fix. 

He leaned heavily on the golem as he picked his way through the still warm ashes. The fire must’ve been extremely intense, many were still grouped together, no sign they’d even tried to flee. Few were recognizable, so badly burnt as they were. He was sure which one was the kennelmaster at least, her body slumped by the gate to her precious hounds. Pity or remorse was not that first thing that flooded in after shock, but a morbid curiosity. What had happened to the snake?

Finally, he registered the smell. The closer he got to the corpses, the stronger it got; sour, acrid, and with pleasantly fragrant edge in a mockery of the slaughter. It was the smell of burnt wood flesh, boiled sap, and seared clothing. He opened his mouth to taste it. It should’ve made him feel ill, yet right now it was the sweetest thing. 

He hummed as he shuffled across the blackened earth. There was the duchess, with her staff still clutched in brittle fingers. Her servant wasn’t far from her, maybe he had died protecting her, the poor, mindless thing. As happy he was to see her dead, she wasn’t who he was looking for, he wanted the snake. There, that spark of life-

The body  _ he _ was trapped under was immediately recognizable. No one else in this now dead court had such a broad, powerful frame, evident even while most of it was charred and foul. Sir Silence’s strength had always been a waste here, where they rarely had the numbers to do more than pick off the odd, unlucky warden. Now he was dead and underneath his heavy corpse was a thin, dying figure, twitching in the ash around it. 

Letharus nudged the figure with his staff, a cruel smile on his lips. Here was his tormenter, who’d done nothing but make his life hell for years, unable to even cry out in pain while he squirmed under the corpse of his lover. Delwyn’s face and torso were blackened and cracked, the rest of him hidden by ash and burnt wood. He smelled like burning sage; pleasant.

He watched the dying count shudder and twitch, barely conscious. His smile did not falter and he lifted his staff, a hand on the golem’s claw for support, to bring it down between two pieces of cracked flesh to the raw muscle beneath that oozed golden sap. The man stiffened, his throat too ruined by smoke to scream. The pain that filtered through to Letharus was intense enough to make him gasp.

The staff arched down again, jabbing again and again into the most tender, blistered parts of Delwyn’s ruined skin. His scars ached and split in protest. Sap soaked robes were such a minor trade off for savoring his brief revenge. The dying count slumped unconscious sometime during the assault, what strength he had left quickly fading. It had been so many years since Letharus could last remember laughing without terror or fear behind it. 

He stood there awhile, laughing, eyes streaming from the smoke and much more than that. 

When his laughter turned to harsh, pained coughing, he’d had enough. He could leave and there was no one to follow. He turned and made his way past the blackened bodies, out of the ravine with the golem by his side. The smell of fire and death clung to his clothing as a wonderful reminder of his escape from the monster that had breathed down his neck for five agonizing years. He’d go to the arbor. 

Maybe he’d be killed. The fear of death had long left him. That who he hated the most was a dying shadow behind him and that was good enough for now.

* * *

The body at his feet smelled of pine and burnt leather. It had not struggled much as it had died, lost and injured in the swamp for quite a while before its fate had caught up to it, judging by the jutting ribs and dragging leg. Another time he would tend to the lost Dreamer; after it was secure in the arbor. This one was allowed the mercy of death.

Letharus hadn’t killed the shrunken sylvari, that had been his pupil, his squire, sitting on a dead log out of range of the smell of the fire she had started. He smiled fondly in her direction. The death had bothered her. She was still so fresh to nightmare, still so unused to pain and ending life. Pride swelled in his chest.

She was getting a real taste of freedom, of truth. She would see now that she could act on those urges to burn and kill. It would take direction, of course, but that is what he was there for. He would mold her into a powerful knight who could twist her urges to best serve nightmare. Here was great potential in her. 

He would follow her brilliance like swirling ash after a blaze.   


End file.
